Jenn's Journal: An Author's Abode

Mark Twain's former residence.
That is the conservatory there in the lower left.

My sister and niece, Jaime and Edith, honored me with a visit this week. Their presence prompted me to get out of the house and see what Connecticut has to offer. Today we perused Mark Twain's Hartford house. I had always thought he was from Missouri and, therefore, spent most of his life there. However, this trip taught me that he actually wrote his most famous works in Connecticut.

The front of the house

The house measures more than 11,000 square feet in size, and much of it has been restored to at least resemble what it may have looked like when he lived there with his family. In fact, one of his daughters was still living when it became a historical site, and she helped the original restorers put things in their proper place to most closely resemble the house when she (and the famous author) lived there.

We chose to tour both the servants' quarters and the main house, but no pictures were allowed in either region, so I had to commit to memory what I could and rely on publicly available photos for the rest.

The back of the carriage house.

The servants' quarters seemed fairly typical. They lacked the ornate features found in the rest of the house, but the oven and stove were top-end, and the rest of the furnishings at least gave us an idea of what it might have looked like. None of the items in this portion were original, but the oven/stove was supposed to be the same model that Samuel Clemens had bought for his staff to use.

Behind the main house lies the carriage house. At the time, it housed not only the carriages, but also the coachman and his family (including seven children). It seemed to be a pretty good-sized building, but it is for staff only. We therefore had to settle on viewing it only from the outside.

The Carriage House

The rest of the house was fun to see. Most of the fine art never belonged to the Clemens family, but the museum has done their best to give visitors an idea of how the house was decorated. Some of the original pieces include a mantle purchased on a trip to Scotland and their bed, an item for which Samuel Clemens evidently paid entirely too much. The second floor included a schoolroom for his three girls. I loved seeing the little desks and chairs. I could picture my own little brood sitting there learning their lessons. The top floor holds the billiard room and Mark Twain's desk. He kept his manuscripts in a piece of furniture with cubby-holes. He would take a story out, work on it until he got stuck, put it back, and grab the next one. In this manner, he finished many of his famous books.

Of course, I could not have toured the house without the assistance of Jaime. She watched S and H for me so I could listen and learn about the former home of this talented man. What a sweetheart she is.

When we were finished with the tours, we headed out to eat and then home. It was fun to have a chance to visit a new museum and explore a small portion of history with my children. I hope that AJ and K remember what they saw and learned when we study the late 1800s in history this year.